Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here today.
I noted with interest many of the increased investments in housing and economic development opportunities, schools, waste water, water management, and many other initiatives. In fact, if you look at the summary provided by the Library of Parliament, there is a very dramatic increase over the last four and a half or five years.
So I commend the department for that, and I think Canadians are happy to see us addressing some of these long-standing issues.
One of the things that I've had the privilege of doing over the last three and a half years since I've come to Parliament is meeting with a number of leaders from the Métis community. Increasingly, as I met with them, they appeared to be giving me the message that we weren't addressing their concerns, and I understand that last summer the Conservative government did sign a Métis Nation protocol with the Métis National Council. I was wondering if you could just give us a bit of an update as to the progress on the implementation of that protocol.